The Kidney Bean: Thanksgiving announcement

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Bob and I drove all around Northern Michigan through a Thanksgiving Day blizzard to announce the baby to family.

Milestones

Two weeks: conception occurred (during the 40 weeks of her pregnancy, a mommy is actually pregnant for only 38 weeks)

Three weeks: our kidney bean (K.B.) was a little ball of cells called a blastocyst

Four weeks: K.B. became an embryo and started making me feel queasy

Five weeks: K.B.'s heart started beating

Six weeks: K.B. started moving

Seven weeks: K.B. started to develop teeth

Eight weeks: K.B. grew to the size of a kidney bean :)

Nine weeks: K.B.'s tail disappeared

Ten weeks: K.B. became a fetus

Eleven weeks: K.B.'s webbed hands and feet separated to form fingers and toes

Twelve weeks: K.B.'s little kidneys started working

Thirteen weeks: K.B.'s unique fingerprints were in place

Fourteen weeks: K.B. and Mommy started the second trimester!

Fifteen weeks: K.B. was able to sense light through his/her fused eyelids and could move away if I shined a flashlight at my stomach

Sixteen weeks: K.B. was about 4 1/2 inches head to bottom and pumped 25 quarts of blood each day

Seventeen weeks: K.B.'s hearing began to develop

Eighteen weeks: K.B. was roughly 5 1/2 inches head to bottom and weighed seven ounces

Nineteen weeks: K.B. sprouted hair on his/her scalp

Twenty weeks: K.B. was 6 1/2 inches from head to bottom and ten inches from head to heel

Twenty-one weeks: K.B.'s eyelids and eyebrows were fully developed

Twenty-two weeks: K.B. developed teeth buds

Twenty-three weeks: K.B. was eleven inches long and weighed more than a pound

Twenty-four weeks: K.B.'s taste buds were developing

Twenty-five weeks: K.B. was about thirteen-and-a-half inches and weighed a pound and a half

Twenty-six weeks: K.B. could hear better all the time as the nerve pathways in its ears continued to develop

Twenty-seven weeks: K.B.'s brain tissues developed further

Twenty-eight weeks: K.B. had eyelashes

Twenty-nine weeks: K.B. weighed 2 1/2 pounds and was 15 inches long

Thirty weeks: K.B. weighed almost three pounds and had 20/400 vision

Thirty-one weeks: K.B. weighed over three pounds and was 16 inches long

Thirty-two weeks: K.B. grew to nearly four pounds and was almost 17 inches long

Thirty-three weeks: K.B.'s bones began to harden

Thirty-four weeks: K.B.'s central nervous system was still maturing, but its lungs were fairly well developed

Thirty-five weeks: K.B.'s kidneys were fully developed and its liver could process some waste products

Thirty-six weeks: K.B. is gaining about an ounce a day now

The Kidney Bean